Pollitt criticizes Daily Times' publication of public salaries

Oct. 18, 2013

Written by

Staff Writer

SALISBURY — Wicomico County Executive Rick Pollitt sent a letter to all county employees Oct. 3, criticizing The Daily Times for publishing employees’ salaries on its website as part of a Sept. 29 special report on the county payroll and overtime. He also said the newspaper’s editor had gone back on a promise to withhold certain employee names, a statement the editor disputes.

Pollitt, in his letter to staff, explains how he invited Executive Editor Michael Kilian and reporter Jennifer Shutt to a meeting in July to voice concerns for “the safety of our employees who work in sensitive, possibly at-risk, positions,” he wrote. He acknowledges that the county legally could not withhold any names.

“Unfortunately, our efforts and requests were ignored and the failure of The Daily Times to respect the privacy of some of our employees, despite the verbal assurances of the editor to the contrary, is extremely disappointing,” Pollitt wrote in the letter.

Pollitt did not return calls for comment Friday. “If you insist on going ahead with the article, my official position is that I stand by my letter and I will make no further comment about it,” he said in an email to Kilian on Friday.

Kilian disagrees with the county executive’s recollection of the July conversation. He said he outlined at the meeting the newspaper’s First Amendment responsibility to hold county government accountable by examining its payroll and overtime spending, and that he’d stated the newspaper’s intent to run the list of employee salaries online but not in the printed newspaper.

“My integrity is my word,” Kilian said. “We hold our reporters to high standards in terms of obtaining information and checking facts. If we make a mistake, we correct it, and that will happen every time. In this case, the county executive put out a statement questioning my integrity without even having the courtesy to call me before he put it out and I’m very disappointed in that.”

The county’s position hinges in part on a late September telephone conversation between Kilian and George Kaloroumakis, director of Wicomico County’s Department of Corrections. According to Kilian, Kaloroumakis had concern about whether names of corrections officers were going to be published. Kilian said he told him that a full list of county employees’ names, titles and pay was going to be published online and not in print.

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“George took offense because we ran the Top 10 overtime earners in the county” in an information box in the printed Daily Times. “I will defend running that in any county in America, because that’s information that’s relevant to the public, to get a sense of how well overtime is being controlled.”

Kaloroumakis did not respond to a request to be interviewed.

Wicomico County State’s Attorney Matt Maciarello attended the meeting between the newspaper and county officials. He said the newspaper was provided with at least one example of violence that was visited upon police and prosecutors after their names were made public.

While Maciarello says he understands the need for government transparency, “I just thought that I would be derelict in my duty if I failed to communicate my concern for the risk that a few may face due to the sensitive and high-risk nature of the work that they perform for Wicomico County,” he said.

Gene Policinski, executive director of the First Amendment Center, defended the decision by The Daily Times to identify the county employees by name.

“The public has a right to know what it is paying public employees down to the cafeteria lady,” Policinski said. “The public employee doesn’t really have a reasonable expectation of privacy when they take the job.” As for certain employees with sensitive jobs, it’s the county that bears the burden of redacting those names from public view, and then to provide a legally grounded explanation, he said.

Both sides say they hope this incident won’t negatively impact their relationship.